Thursday, April 16, 2015

When Our Lord Returns, Will He Find Faith?

Writing in what is essentially a
college or graduate level textbook, Atila Sinke Guimaraes develops
the thesis that, based on the Council, progressivism denies the
fixed, immutable character of the Catholic Faith. His book, Will
He Find Faith (Inveniet Fidem?), isthe sixth of an eleven volume
encyclopedic study of the sufferings of the Church since the Second
Vatican Council. The book details the transitional and evolutionist
character that progressivists have imposed upon the faith. This new
faith is no longer objective, but subjective; no longer absolute and
universal, but relative and adaptable to history.

In a
section dealing with new meanings given to infallible, dogmatic
formulas, one of the particulars that Guimaraes cites concerns the
dogma of Jesus Christ as true God and true man. The rejection of the
truth that Jesus is God is the notorious Arian heresy, which denies
the divinity of Jesus. This error “. . . denies that the Son is of
one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not consubstantial
(homoousios) with the
Father, and therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or
co-eternal, or within the real sphere of the Deity.”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm

The
refusal to accept the other half of the dogma, that Jesus is true
man, is the heresy of Docetism, which denies the humanity of Jesus.
The Docetists were a sect that taught that Christ only “appeared or
seemed to be” a man. “Some denied the reality of Christ's human
nature altogether, some only the reality of His human body or of His
birth or death.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm

In a
subsection of his book, under the heading The Humanity of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, Guimaraes sets his sights on a volume written by Joseph
Ratzinger in 1971, when he was at the University of Regensburg in
Bavaria. While there he co-founded the journal Communio,
along with Hans Urs von Balthasar, Walter Kasper, and others. In
this book Fé e Futuro
(unavailable in English), the future pope wrote: “But
is it possible for God to be a man?
A man completely human and at the same time true God, and hence
entitled to demand faith from all and in all ages? Or is this not
simply a case of overestimating a moment from the past? Once again,
are we not encountering a
mentality that we no longer share?”
[quoted in p. 217, Will He Find Faith?]

Since Guimaraes
presents the above excerpt in a section dealing with the Humanity of
Jesus, he apparently sees this as an attempt to deny or at least
revisit the concept that Jesus Christ is true man. Spiritual writers
and mystics present clear reasons why it is crucial to accept that
the Lord, although a divine Person, was truly human:

“Beware,
therefore, My child, lest thou hearken to them that say that there is
a higher and better road for more perfect souls; a way, not of My
Heart, but of the mere Godhead. A way which, setting aside or
overlooking My Humanity, can lead thee in a sublime manner to thy
end, through the Divinity alone. Whoever says this to thee, be he a
man or an angel, believe him not, trust him not. For, through My
Humanity I came to men, and through this same Humanity, must men come
to Me.” [The Imitation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
Rev. Peter J. Arnoudt, TAN Books, chapter 26, book 4.]

“I
assumed a Humanity which, moderating the rays of the light of the
Divinity, was a means to instill trust and courage in man to come to
Me. By placing himself before my Humanity, which spreads temperate
rays of My Divinity, man has the gift of being able to purify,
sanctify and even to divinize himself in My Deified Humanity. That
is why all good things for man come from My Humanity.”[Book
of Heaven, Luisa Piccarreta,
Volume 3, entry of Aug. 1, 1900]